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Here we are – kids, dogs and all! Thanks for visiting our page! We're hoping that you will enjoy hearing about our travels and experiences as a family. We intend for this blog to share more than just travel journals, but also insights and lessons learned during our daily adventures. Please share your comments and come back often! * update * as of August 2010, we finished our journey, so new entries to this site will be rare. Linda's starting a new personal blog here. Enjoy!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

After Thanksgiving, we headed further south to Corpus Christi by way of one overnight stay in Comfort, TX. Corpus was our last home before beginning our travelling season, so we were all looking forward to sunny skies and visiting friends. Well, the visiting friends was very fun - the sunny skies - not so much! A cold front came through and kept the temperatures very cool for the area and lots of soggy drizzle and fog. Oh well...it is December, after all! We really liked the RV park and could see why many snowbirds were moving in. The nearby Nueces Bay provides a nice view without the saltiness and sand of the Gulf.

We saw several of our old favorite birds, including this heron - out in spite of the cool temperatures!

We arrived in time to make a few rehearsals and help out with an annual Christmas production presented by the local home school group.

Lots of hard work goes in to this production and we especially appreciate the directors, Mrs. Hallock and Mrs. Seaman that dedicate untold hours from summer, fall and into winter preparing the productions. The selected plays are always consistent in their focus that Christmas is centered on the birth of the Messiah. The children, from toddlers to teens, are all encouraged to view their role as messengers, rather than performers and they always provide a tremendous delivery!

Our kids were able to participate by being a shepherd for the nativity scene and a smart aleck New Yorker (due for a huge awakening).

The intermission provided a unique rendition of the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' with customized lyrics for home school families - if we can get our hands on the lyrics, we'll share later - very cute!

All in all, a very fun and pleasant evening blessed by the many friendly and familiar faces! We enjoyed touching base with several friends while in the area, including Sean - who was missed most of all by Ginger!

We hope to return again next year to see the same familiar faces and hopefully more. We'll try to schedule a longer visit to allow for meeting up with more of the folks that we remember so fondly in the area!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

We haven't been posting for awhile as we've been busy visiting family and working on a repair issue for the 5th wheel. We'll make a separate post of the repair issue as it is yet unresolved. Suffice it to say that we are blessed to travel safely still and thank God for his continued grace upon our travels!

We are steadily working our way south and are still enjoying glimpses of fall color as we travel! We've been seeing varying displays of fall color since August in Minnesota and are happy that our nomadic travels have had this particular perk of enjoying fall for several months instead of just a couple of weeks.

The kids were happy to arrive at their grandparents in time to help construct, paint and display a large nativity scene in their front yard. The pieces were cut from plywood and the guys had a great time helping with the tools! They were also introduced to post hole digging and tamping. We know that is a skill that will return at some point in their future!

We'll have to update the photos in a couple of weeks with the full display of an angel, star and donkey...and of course, the baby Jesus!

A local model railroad club had an open house to peruse their elaborate displays and operation of their trains. The boys had a great time taking that all in, but unfortunately - no camera for that adventure!

We were able to spend some time playing games and watching football games in a 'real' living room at Linda's brother's. The RV is great for a lot of things, but doesn't work well for gathering family to join in those kinds of activities!

Linda's sister and brother-in-law graciously hosted a fajita dinner the weekend before Thanksgiving for a large number of the family members that were together. As the extended family grows, expands and relocates in various locales in the country, it's wonderful to celebrate as many as possible getting together at one time. The food was delicious and the visit wonderful!

We also appreciated their hospitality as we slept at their house - well away from highway noise and really close neighbors! We love our travelling life for this season, but having the peace and quiet of a house without wheels was a nice blessing for us for a week or so. Add in the fun of fellowship over coffee in the morning and some Scrabble tourneys in the evenings and we just were brimming over with blessings.

Thanksgiving Day afforded another opportunity for family to gather with a take-out meal from Cracker Barrel. The food was great and easy clean-up allowed everyone to enjoy the football games and visiting in the afternoon.

Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays as it reminds us to take pause and reflect upon our many, many blessings.

A few of the things for which we are thankful in this year:

First and always, our thanks to God, our gracious heavenly Father that loves us so much beyond what we can imagine

Jesus, the Messiah and precious Savior

Holy Spirit that indwells us so that we can better honor and glorify God

each other (Craig and Linda) - we love our opportunity to be lifelong partners in all the ups and downs, over hill, over dale, etc.!

our kids - precious and unique in so many ways - they provide us great joy!

our extended family that is keeping up with our season of adventure on the road

our country with its vast expanse of beauty and its unique offering of freedoms for its' citizens

ps - we couldn't including a photo of our neighbor at the RV park. We've seen a few of this type of rig on our journey, but this is the first time we've captured a photo. The ultimate bunkhouse - provides multiple private sleeping quarters with a shared bath/kitchen facility at the front, and lots of doors for individual access to the 'bedrooms'!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Finally, it was time to head south toward Texas. We drove toward Raton, NM and had an uneventful drive up until we just crested Raton Pass on the border between Colorado and New Mexico. It was late afternoon, but the shadow of the mountain pass made it seem later. We were relieved to be through the pass with little difficulty when we came upon a vehicle that was stalled in the right driving lane of the Interstate. Craig had two trucks riding close on his bumper and one already had smoke coming from his brakes. Craig knew he had no way to pull into the passing lane as the trucks were already passing him and likely couldn't see the stalled vehicle. He had already applied the trailer brakes manually to slow the trailer as much as possible, but there was no way for us to safely stop behind the stalled vehicle. We praise God that our speed was reduce enough to negotiate onto the shoulder without toppling over and we managed to pass the vehicle using the shoulder. We called '911' as quickly as we could and hope and pray that the DPS was able to remove the vehicle before a serious accident occurred. We have had yet another reminder of God's grace to us on this journey - He is a good and gracious God!

After the overnight stop in the town of Raton, we trekked on to Amarillo. The RV park provides free laundry facilities, so we stripped everything that wasn't attached to the RV for a major wash day. We also enjoyed a wonderful dinner with old friends from our panhandle days, Mark and Mindy. Mindy prepared a great feast and their daughters exercised great hostessing skills in making us feel so at home. We visited and enjoyed the kids sharing their musical talents until well after dark and returned to the RV, ready to prepare for attending a Tea Party rally the next day. We didn't know that we were in for a big surprise in the middle of the night!

Between 1 and 2 a.m., something woke Linda and she asked if something was wrong with the furnace. A terrible rushing sound was coinciding with our furnace running. While checking out what was happening, she peaked through the RV windows and caught sight of a blaze. Now fully alert and alarmed, we grabbed jackets and headed outdoors. The blaze was of a tremendous size, but we couldn't tell how distant to the RV park. The sound was even more remarkable. A handful of RV'ers were also creeping out into the dark, some climbing on top of their rigs to get a better view. With the panhandle plains, it wasn't really necessary to go that high to see what we later found out were 700' flames from a 24" exploded gas pipeline. We prowled a bit more, visited with those neighbors that were awake, marvelled that some apparently heard nothing and slept blissfully through the whole thing, heard a report on the radio of the explosion being at a nearby town, Bushland. We knew we were about 3 miles from that town and decided to count on emergency personnel and the RV park management to evacuate us if necessary, prayed for the emergency crews and anyone in harm's way and finally went back to bed around 3 a.m. Here's a photo cropped from a news report and a blog from a local photographer whose family was miraculously spared harm from the massive explosion.

After sleeping soundly for what remained of the night, we groggily awoke to prepare our signs for the Tea Party Express Rally scheduled to arrive in Amarillo at noon.

We got our signs ready just in time and headed to the park. We were not the first to arrive by far!

Here we are, proudly displaying our messages and flags while waiting for the two busloads of rally leaders.Several individuals and organizations were selling signs, buttons and flags sporting messages to protest the current trend of spending and taxation in Washington.We were pleased to see that these are truly grassroots individuals that have simply had enough to sitting on the sidelines while Washington proceeds to build the deficit. This lady had come with her sign all the way from Ft. Worth to attend this rally and to follow for another couple of stops in Texas.Finally, the bus arrived with the speakers and entertainers for the event.We were joined by our friends just in time for the speakers.Our son climbed a nearby playscape to capture a better idea of the crowd's size. We're not good at estimating numbers of people, but we thought it was a good turnout.

We met these charming ladies on the way to our truck. The lady on the right has been bringing this same sign to protests since 1977! They are from nearby Happy, TX. You can see that her sign's background is dark compared to the sign on the left. Not exactly what you envision with the descriptor of activist? What a trooper!The rally continued until almost 2:30, so we had a late lunch and headed back to the camper to feed our dogs before meeting Linda's brother-in-law and nephew for dinner.

The nephew is attending college at nearby Plainview and we were treated to spectacular 360 degree sunset views along the way.The guys loved the Japanese steakhouse.The chef prepared a delicious menu on the huge griddle right before us.The blaze brought reminders of the eventful blaze in the night, but we were able to relax and enjoy this one after the initial startling flame. We enjoyed the visit and fine food and a wonderful full night of sleep at long last!

We had a terrific day touring Palo Duro Canyon just south of Amarillo with our friends. Our amateur photography doesn't capture the colors well. The canyon had a bit more color than other seasons with the golden cottonwoods bordering the water.The water running through the park has a lengthy name, the Prairie Dog Town fork of the Red River. While not running very full on this day, campers and hikers in the canyon must take care when thunderstorms are in the area. No worries on this day with clear skies and very warm temperatures!

We pose at a replica dugout shelter from the time of Charles Goodnight who created his sprawling ranch around the canyon. The park has a very nice museum that captures some native American activity with the canyon and well chronicles Goodnight and his colorful history in Texas Independence and founding his ranching empire in this area.

It was nice to have a break from the snowy landscapes of Colorado and Wyoming. Texas has its own beauty and offers things that the north cannot.

One of those things would be good Mexican food. We could not even find a tortilla in Minnesota and any attempts at Mexican fare north of Amarillo or east of Houston are weak at best. So we celebrated Tex-Mex cuisine with our friends at Abuelo's and it was wonderful.

We certainly enjoy seeing all the wonders, man-made and God made in our grand country, but having the opportunity to visit family certainly outranks sightseeing! While in the area, we were able to visit my (Linda) niece and her family. The snowy days behind us, we drove over to their home in Colorado Springs and toured the Garden of the gods park. The day was beautiful and we enjoyed a great lunch in the cafe at the park. We played with the kids for awhile, then took a closer look at the unique rock wonders.

The kids found nooks and crannies that presented tight spots and high places.

We just had to take a peak as the boys explored a tunnel that was a little creepy.

The wonderful day of visiting and sight seeing closed with an amazing sky with the rising moon!

We are so thankful for the chance to catch up with family - we are blessed!

The RV park owner told us where the locals go to sled. When we saw this giant tube coming down the mountain, we decided we were there! The boys had a great time with the sleds we have lugged around throughout Wyoming and Colorado thus far. This was the first really great slope that wasn't a highway embankment and they absolutely flew down the mountain.

The climb to the top was tough but so worth the fun trip down!

We loved the introduction to Colorado winter in a small dose. The trees were beautiful with the fresh snow. It certainly seemed more like Christmas than October to us! If you look closely, you can see a doe with her fawn under the snow burdened tree branches.

As it warmed up, the snow left almost as quickly as it had arrived. Craig and Will found a dry table under a 5th wheel being stored for winter to tackle pumpkin carving. We had been so busy enjoying the snow that the local stores were sold out of traditional pumpkins, but we were happy with the albino variety!

Their hard work payed off in the cheerful glowing pumpkin faces below:

We were glad that we got a photo, since the nightly visit from the mule deer resulted in 1/2 eaten pumpkins the next morning!

Our normal tradition for Halloween is to hand out candy and gospel tracts, but visitors were unlikely to the RV park a few miles from town. So, we stayed in to make popcorn balls and watch movies and had a great time!